Janice Y. (jai) reviewed on 6/1/2007 + 310 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 11

Pepper Martin is a cemetery tour guide who fell and hit herself on the front step of dead mob boss Gus Scarpetti's mausoleum. Soon afterwards she begins to see Scarpetti himself, and he wants her to investigate his murder. Pepper is a rich middle class girl who has found herself without a fortune when her father was conviced of fraud, and has no idea how to solve a 30 year old murder. A fast read with a style that reminds me of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. The writing flowed very well, and there were a lot of interesting side characters, but the mystery wasn't that griping (although it was hard to guess whodunit). I also found it hard to like Pepper for the first half of the book, mostly because she was rather ditzy. Still, she seemed to get smarter, and thusly more likeable towards the end. What really bothered me though was EVERY man Pepper meets (even men 30+ years her senior) leered at her breasts. What is that? I wasn't sure if I should be annoyed about the depiction of Pepper, because Pepper didn't seeme to mind, even puffing them out in certain scenes (even after arguing with Scarpetti about his chauvanism. Is she supposed to be feminist?), or annoyed at the depiction of men (in this century, I think most men know that's rude, or at least know not to be so obvious. At least don't make ALL the men in this book do that).

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